


Hallow, Hollow

by cadmean



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Bloodplay, Breathplay, M/M, Manhandling, sex to complete a magic ritual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-11 17:20:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18428609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadmean/pseuds/cadmean
Summary: Everything comes with a price.





	Hallow, Hollow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chicago_ruth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicago_ruth/gifts).



In the right kind of lighting, Julian had noticed after the fourth time he’d startled out of his exhausted daze with his head only a few breadths above the hard surface of his work desk, his rough, haphazard sketches of the Hanged Man almost looked as if they were alive. There was a strange, almost fluid grace to the twist of his wings, and the rope coiled around his ankles seemed to shift ever so slightly, as if there truly was a heavy weight pulling it taught. Then again, the pickled eel in the jar on the shelf near the door also looked as if it moved just a bit whenever Julian tilted his head just so, and he’d dissected the thing himself, which necessarily meant that—

His head did hit the table now. Julian opened eyes he hadn’t even noticed he’d closed and he pulled back upright, leaning back ins his rickety chair as he scrubbed his hands across his face in a desperate attempt to stay awake. The dim light provided by the flickering lamps did little to alleviate his exhaustion, instead adding an ever so slightly out of focus quality to the tight confines of his office that made Julian's head swim the more he tried to focus on it.

A brief sideways glance at the door told him that it was indeed still as tightly shut as it had been when Lucio had first locked him in here however many hours – days? Surely not – ago.  Self-preservation, Lucio had laughed as he’d pushed the skittering beetle into Julian’s mouth, his cold golden fingers wrapped punishingly tight around his throat until Julian had no choice but to swallow, would provide a fantastic incentive to finally get properly working on a cure.

Despite the low, humid heat permeating this level of the dungeons Julian couldn’t help a shiver at the memory.

Outside of his office, the laboratory was deserted. Most of the other doctors and various scientist-types had long since abandoned the project, either vanishing into the streets of Vesuvia or, more tragically, gone to the island lazaret – and even those that did remain must have gone back to their quarters for the night. Valdemar was still around somewhere, of course – they wouldn’t be kept away from their experiments if the devil himself told them to stay away, Julian reckoned – but given that they had only cheerily told him through the barred window in the door to try harder, Julian somehow doubted that they were going to be of any use in letting him out of his impromptu prison.

Which meant that in order to get out Julian would have to find a cure for the red plague, only that he’d run out of ideas weeks ago; and of course Asra said that the whole thing wasn’t of mundane origin in the first place and therefore couldn’t be cured through mundane means anyway, and that they would have to turn to the Arcana, but Asra had neglected to tell Julian just how to do that and wasn’t that typical, really—

Julian fell asleep with one hand still clutching tight the broken stump of a pen.

 

* * *

 

The swamp was hot, humid, and not wet in the slightest even as Julian stood knee-deep in the boggy water flowing over the thick roots and vines that seemed to cover most of the visible ground. If there was a sky above he couldn’t see it, so thick was the canopy above him; and though there was nothing in the way of torches or any other direct sources of light, a red-hued gloom permeated everything. Experimentally, Julian closed his right eye to see whether the red hue remained: it did, as did the disconcertingly tall figure standing just a bit off to that side.

—hold that thought.

Julian blinked with both eyes, separately, just to be sure. Still the figure remained. He did what he deemed to be a suitably dramatic double-take and, yes, the figure was still there afterwards — standing closer than just moments ago, too, to the point where Julian could just start to make out its decidedly not quite human features.

“Listen,” Julian called out to the figure after a long moment, “if you’re going to be one of those quite frankly terrifying personifications of my own failures and fears, chasing after me with teeth and tentacles and claws, and I can’t even run away properly because of nightmare logic — if it’s all the same to you, could we possibly skip to the part after, where I wake up?”

“No—you waking up already would ruin the whole point of getting you here in the first place, wouldn’t it? It took you so long, I was wondering if you would ever be able to reach me,” the figure said, its voice a croak full of dark promises. “You do tend to take your time with these things, don’t you?”

Julian shrugged somewhat sheepishly. “I’m not sure I understand what’s going on, but, ah, rest assured that I am usually fairly quick on the uptake! In fact, I—“ He trailed off, not sure where he was going to go with that sentence. Talking felt good, though, and his voice didn’t sound as off as everything else about the place did, and so Julian resolved to keep talking until something happened—

Nothing happened, which was somehow more concerting than whatever horrors Julian’s mind had inadvertently begun to conjure up. As the figure stepped towards him, not a single one of its movements seemed to disturb the water that surrounded the both of them – and it wasn’t so much as if the vines and tree roots parted for the figure, nothing as physically obvious and observable as that, but rather that wherever the figure stepped there was simply nothing to bar its way.

“Pity,” the figure said, halting at only an arm’s length away from Julian, “I thought you might have recognized me by now.” As Julian watched, the seemingly ever-present gloom slowly sloughed off of its shape, revealing sharply-toned muscles and feathers as dark as the midday shadows. The awfully sharp-looking beak clacked together as the figure cocked its head to the side to fix Julian with glinting eyes. “Anything at all sparking in that brain of yours?”

“Oh,” said Julian, feeling terribly eloquent as realization suddenly dawned.

“Oh indeed,” replied the Hanged Man.

They stared at each other in silence. The low din of insects buzzing somewhere far in the distance provided ample distraction for Julian until he realized that for all the noise he could hear, he hadn’t yet seen a single living thing aside from the Hanged Man himself.

Best to take a page from Nazali’s book, then, and meet the problem head-on. “I still haven’t ruled out that this is just a particularly strange dream, I’ll have you know, but in case this is all actually happening: Why am I here?”

The Hanged Man laughed at that, his beak opening wide, and Julian resolved to return the hypothetical page to Nazali. “You’re here because you want to be,” the Hanged Man eventually said, voice still caught between in the tail-ends of a laugh. “And sometimes, if the need is great enough, even those not particularly magically inclined manage to cross over into the realms of the Arcana.”

Julian forced a quick, dry little laugh at that. “You know me—Do you know me? You, ah, know me figuratively-speaking, I’m sure: you know me, always trying to push boundaries with my work.”

“Self-sacrifice is a beautiful thing,” the Hanged Man agreed, suddenly sounding contemplative. “However, it must needs also be proportionate to the situation and you, Julian, have been operating far outside of your sustainable boundaries for a while now.”

“You’re not the first to say that,” Julian shrugged. Then, thinking of Lucio, and the locked door, and last, but tragically not least, the memory of the beetle forcing its way down his throat, he added, “And I’ll doubt you’ll be the last for a while yet.”

“Perfect.” Almost quicker than Julian’s eyes could follow, the Hanged Man suddenly pulled at the air around him with one hand, pointed fingers curling into a fist – and when he opened his hand again, the smooth carapace of a red beetle glimmered in the dim light.

Before he could stop himself, Julian had brought up a hand to cover his own mouth. “I’m not quite seeing the connection between ‘perfect’ and that—abomination of an insect,” he forced out through clenched teeth.

“Don’t be obtuse, doctor. Isn’t this why you tried to contact me in the first place? I can provide you with a bit of—support,” the Hanged Man elaborated, tossing the beetle in a low arc from one hand to the other. The deep crimson of its chitin armor glinted sickeningly bright in the flickering torchlight, and fascination warred with nausea as Julian watched the high arc it cut through the air, its tiny, sharp legs refracting the light in an awful cascade of red as it vainly scrabbled for purchase against the air.  “You have the plague in you already – and I cannot cure you. But what I can do is give you time.”

“I’m all for extra time, me,” Julian chuckled; it came out sounding more hollow than anything, and the laugh was quickly lost in the damp air.

The Hanged Man watched him with those awfully dark eyes for a long moment, then shrugged a strange little bird-shrug. “Give me your hand, then.” He held out his own large, taloned one, and Julian could see no other course of action than to offer his own in return.

He’d half-expected the Hanged Man to grab his wrist and pull him forward, so he wasn’t completely taken off-guard by it, but he nevertheless flailed in the still water as he was forced to take a couple of quick steps towards the Hanged Man. By the time Julian had found his balance once more, the Hanged Man was plucking a large feather from his own wing.

“Is it supposed to be that sharp-looking?” Julian asked with a nervous little laugh. Should he be trying to pull his hand away? He wasn’t sure, and just a minute ago he wouldn’t have minded the grip at all, but the feather _was_ looking awfully sharp, and with the way the Hanged Man was holding it—

The Hanged Man wasted little time as he flipped Julian’s hand in his grip so that both of them were facing palm-up. With only the briefest of bird-shrugs, he a cut across his own feathered palm and then, laughing softly, he reached out for Julian’s and did the same there. It happened quicker than Julian’s eyes could follow, and the pain—wasn’t painful, as such, but sharp and bright and somehow grounding nevertheless. He let the Hanged Man press their bleeding hands together, and for the brief span of time it took for him to draw in a startled breath, he swore he could feel the Hanged Man’s magic mingle with his very own essence. It was a heady feeling. Suffocating, overwhelming, but also—right. It felt right, in a way that nothing else in this realm had so far, and when the Hanged Man pulled away and their fingers separated with a soft squelching sound, Julian couldn’t help a low moan.

The Hanged Man chuckled at this, his beak clacking together in a disconcerting chatter as he eyed Julian. Finger still dripping with both their blood, the Hanged Man pointed at Julian’s throat. “Pull your head back.”

Swallowing around an increasingly tight throat, Julian did as he was told.

“Good boy,” the Hanged Man cawed, and now Julian really did blush, his eyes fluttering shut at the first touch of the tip of the Hanged Man’s finger against the soft, vulnerable skin of his throat.

The sigil the Hanged Man proceeded to trace there in the both of their blood must have been terribly intricate and of great magical complexity, not to speak of the significance of one of the Arcana personally crafting magic, and by his duty as a scientist and a doctor Julian should have been paying proper attention so as to possibly replicate the procedure — but all he could focus on was the soft rasp of the Hanged Man’s talon against the skin of his throat, the blood doing little to slicken its passage as it completed the design there.

“And now to activate it,” the Hanged Man said, though he only drew his hand away when Julian finally managed to open his eyes again.

“How?” Julian rasped, not trusting his voice for anything more than that single word.

The Hanged Man cocked his head at Julian and shrugged another decidedly bird-like shrug, standing still too close for propriety. With a soft laugh he moved closer still, until his crotch was pressed up right against the bones of Julian’s hips.

“There are other ways, of course,” he said, and this close Julian could feel the rumble in his chest when he spoke. “But they’re not as effective.” Another pause. “Or as fun. Wouldn’t you agree, doctor?”

Julian swallowed once. Twice. Another one of the Nazali’s sayings: _Nothing ventured, nothing gained, no fun had._

And hot on the heels of that, a memory of Asra’s voice, quiet, cutting through the red-hued haze: _dealing with the Arcana is never simple or straightforward. Keep that in mind if you ever do happen to run into one of them, Ilya_. Julian was an experienced-enough cheat at cards to know that no win came without some sort of concession made, and that the toughest games were against those players who had their own set of hidden cards — where was the trap here, then? The price to pay for the protection of the sigil was no price at all, and surely the Hanged Man knew that. Julian was painfully aware that he wasn’t experienced enough in magical matters to make any proper attempts to figure out what game the Hanged Man was playing here, but even—

The Hanged Man’s taloned hands tightened briefly around Julian’s shoulders, the sharp tips digging through his shirt and biting into the skin below, and Julian lost track of his train of thought with terrifying severity.

“Oh, certainly,” Julian drawled, pressing himself closer to the Hanged Man and gave him the most sultry-looking grin he could manage. “I’m all for new experiences.”

The Hanged Man let go of his shoulders to pull at the empty air again and between one breath and the next Julian found himself pushed up face-first against one of the thick, gnarled trees, his pants pushed down to his ankles and his long coat bundled up around his arms, restricting his movements as the Hanged Man placed one hand on his shoulder and the other pressed against the small of his back. The bark of the tree was strangely soft, almost immaterial against his skin as face was pressed into it—

“Can’t have that, can we,” the Hanged Man croaked.

There was another almost imperceptible shift that tore through the world around them, and the tree turned as solid and rough as any Julian had ever come across. Julian decided not to think too much about it, much in the same way that he only gave token protest when the Hanged Man pushed him up incrementally higher and higher against the tree until Julian could no longer touch the ground.

It should have been disconcerting, that the Hanged Man was able to seemingly effortlessly hold him there, but where Julian was concerned blood was rapidly pooling south and the added pull of gravity only helped. Wriggling slightly against the hold the Hanged Man had on him, Julian managed to grind out a breathless, “I did always say I preferred a partner who’d be able to sweep me off my feet, but I didn’t think that’d get taken quite so literally!”

The Hanged Man only cawed another laugh in response, and the fabric of the world around Julian shifted once more.

There were thick, thorn-studded vines coiled around his wrists now, holding him suspended against the tree; his coat he’d apparently lost completely now. The Hanged Man was pressed up close against his back, stray feathers fluttering against Julian’s skin, his beak nestled just over the crook of Julian’s shoulder. His cock was pushing insistently against Julian’s suddenly slick hole, thick and blunt — but he didn’t thrust forward yet, one of his hands instead grabbing at Julian’s own straining cock instead. Julian tried to push into that grip, but a taloned hand at the back of his neck stilled him, fresh blood from the cut to the palm quickly seeping into his hair.

The Hanged Man’s beak clacked wordlessly next to Julian’s ear. Then he said, “Do you accept the mark I gave you?”

“I—Yes?” The last of his answer turned into a breathy moan as the Hanged Man thrust forward ever so slightly, the tip of his cock just penetrating — and then he stilled again.

“And do you accept the responsibility that comes with it? That comes with your own actions?”

And what other possible answer was there, really? He had to stop the plague. He had to find the cure. “Of course.”

With a triumphant caw the Hanged Man pushed fully inside Julian in one long thrust, punching the air out of his lungs with the force of it. At the same time, he reached around and splayed the fingers of his bloodied hand across the hollow of Julian’s throat, and when he pulled back out again until only the tip of his cock remained inside Julian, the sharp, taloned fingers dug in around the painted sigil there until Julian could once more feel the Hanged Man’s blood mingle with his own.

Julian shuddered. Before he could properly think about it he was pushing up into the sharp points of pain of the Hanged Man’s talons around his throat, and back onto the Hanged Man’s cock as far as he could with the little leverage he had, seeking, already embarrassingly desperately, any sort of contact.

“There we go,” the Hanged Man breathed, sounding delighted. “Work with me, here.”

Julian let out a drawn-out moan as the vines relinquished their hold on his wrists just far enough for Julian to press his hands against the tree in front of him and so fully push back onto the Hanged Man’s cock, sheathing it inside himself until Julian’s ass was flush with the crook of the Hanged Man’s hips. Feathers brushed softly against the small of his back and caressed his ass, the light touch a stark counterpoint to the feeling of the rough bark of the tree under his fingers. Julian groaned again and, at the feeling of the Hanged Man once more curling his fingers into the soft flesh of his throat, he began to move.

He set a slow, exploratory pace, testing out the feel of the Hanged Man’s cock inside of him, the way it stretched him out and reached impossibly deep. His own cock hung thick and heavy between his legs, but with his arms still secured by the vines Julian could do little to alleviate the need there, and the Hanged Man’s own hand had wandered to hold onto the soft flesh above his hips, leaving Julian entirely out of luck — until he managed to angle the Hanged Man’s cock just right, brushing it up against his prostate.

Julian involuntarily let out a choked sound, freezing in his movements as sharp pleasure washed over him.

Almost as if he had only been waiting for this, the Hanged Man tightened his grip around Julian’s throat again, tighter and tighter until Julian couldn’t breathe, his grip so powerful that he had no hope of escaping— and so he pushed himself back onto the cock instead, impaling himself with sharp, desperate movements that quickly faltered as the Hanged Man started up his own pace, thrusting into Julian with deep, powerful strokes that had him gasping out what little air he still had left.

Blackness began to creep up on the edges of Julian’s vision and a distant part of him knew that he should probably be worrying about that, but the rest of him was occupied with the way his whole perception seemed to narrow down to the feeling of the cock in his ass and the dizzy sensation of the Hanged Man roughly fucking him to what could very well be within a span of his life—

The Hanged Man relinquished his hold on his throat as the mark painted there suddenly glowed with a deep, colorless light that burned back the red hue of the rest of the world. Air was returned to his lungs with a sudden _snap_ as this time not the world, but something within Julian himself shifted, and while Julian heaved for air the Hanged Man dug both his hands into Julian’s hips and thrust as deep as he could. Whether by magic or more mundane reasons Julian couldn’t say — didn’t care, at that point — they were both coming, the Hanged Man’s seed thick and scorchingly hot inside of him while Julian spent himself against the tree trunk.

They stayed there, panting, the vines wrapped around his arms retreating until only the Hanged Man’s grip on Julian’s hips and the cock in his ass were all that was holding him up.

“You have the time you need now,” the Hanged Man said, sounding no worse for the wear as his fingers once more curled almost possessively across the hollow of Julian’s throat, “and with time come the tools, and the opportunities, necessary to truly cure the plague.”

“But?” Julian asked, hearing the addendum in the tone of the Hanged Man’s voice and fearing the answer despite the sigil now glowing a stark white at his throat.

“But,” the Hanged Man agreed, “the rest of Vesuvia doesn’t have the time you now have. You need to stop the plague where it started, before it spreads anymore and becomes utterly uncontrollable. You need to kill its source.”

“We’ve been looking for the—”

“The place. The place where it originated from, I know. But you need to be looking for the person instead. _Think_ ,” the Hanged Man whispered as he spread both of his hands across the span of Julian’s collarbones. “Who has been pushing for the discovery of a cure more than anyone? Who needs the cure more than anyone else?”

Julian scowled. He irritatedly flicked a lock of his hair away from his eyes. “Everyone needs it equally, don’t they? There’s so many sick, infected people, I don’t—“

“Who,” the Hanged Man cut him off, his wings now pulling up to spread high and wide behind him, their shifting shadows cast by the dim light spreading over Julian like a diffuse, foggy blanket, “locked you inside your own office?”

Julian felt his mouth go dry. “Surely not—”

 

* * *

 

His head hit the table, and Julian awoke to the sound of the heavy pounding of fists against the door of his office, the low, insistent pulse of the sigil on his throat, and the cold, awful knowledge of just what he needed to do.

 


End file.
